


Blasphemous

by VesperDeRolo



Category: Original Work
Genre: Deal with a Devil, F/M, Gen, Horror, Supernatural - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 07:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17803565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VesperDeRolo/pseuds/VesperDeRolo
Summary: Perhaps - he dared to wish - the deal was not so bad. Yet, a nagging in his mind whispered to him, reminding him of the tragedies that had fallen upon those who made deals with the devil and how they could have been saved from their damned fates by repenting to God.A dry laughter pierced through the air, sounding like a gunshot among the surrounding silence.“Run then, little boy,” the demon’s cursed voice rang in his mind. “Go to your dear deity, grovel at his feet and beg for his forgiveness. But do consider this before you go: What can your God offer you that I cannot?”





	Blasphemous

When nothing else could be done, the only thing he could do was pray. With his body curled up like a hedgehog’s on the cold pavement, his shivering head tucked into his chest, he prayed. He could not feel his lips as he whispered feverish wishes for warmth, and the fingers that folded together to form a plea for mercy were all numb from the freezing winter’s air. When his friends gave up upon him he turned to his family, when his family abandoned him he went to officials for help, when no assistance was given he begged the strangers and passersby - be begged  _ anyone  _ \- for any aid. No one even listened.

The cold threatened to consume his body, a fragile husk that was slowly withering away into dust, just as his consciousness was ebbing away into a darkness that frightened him. If no human would answer his calls, the only hope he had left to turn to was God, and so he prayed. All he wanted now was warmth, the primitive desire to stay alive and live to see another dawn - nothing fancy, nothing ambitious. He was no Dr. Faustus: he did not yearn to know what was beyond the laws of science nor did he crave forbidden knowledge of things that only deities were supposed to know. He just wanted a reply telling him that he was not alone, and a shelter or blanket or anything to not let him become a corpse by tomorrow.

He kept praying, but no one answered.

He swore, vulgar words running through his mind. He wanted to speak those curses aloud but how could he, when even drawing in a laboring breath hurt so much he almost believed death would be easier.

_ Just a flicker of warmth,  _ he thought,  _ is that too much to ask for? _

Everything hurt, and he wanted the God who turned His back on him to feel what he was feeling right now. Even somehow shoving a shred of his anguish at the God would lessen his pain, just a tiny bit. A bitter voice resounded in his mind, reminding him that he had never truly believed in God until now. Did he even believe in Him now? It was no wonder that he received no answer. He never believed in heaven so heaven forsook him; maybe creatures of hell would be more accepting.

His mind wandered, hurting from the frustration and cold, before a memory popped into his mind. He remembered foggy words that someone whose name he could not recall had said long ago. He remembered them telling him of a tale, of how God was the shield protecting mankind from demons that seek to corrupt and enslave them. By this point, he was unsure of what was real and what was not; perhaps God did not answer because He did not exist. If God was not real, then demons were also only a myth.

It did not matter. He already lost everything.

_ Demon _ , he called out in his mind, feeling as if those words were spilling out into an empty void.  _ Any demon that hears me, give me warmth and I’ll serve you. _ Seconds slipped by, and the silence stretched on. Whatever desperate hopes he had in him seemed to have shriveled away. It was stupid; he should not have felt disappointed, but he did. It felt as if someone he trusted his life with had stabbed him in the back. Was his words lost among the cold breeze that blew by? It was cold. Everything was cold.  He could not feel his body, he could not feel anything but the cold. He was sure this night would be his last one, that the cold would devour him before tomorrow could come.

But then there was warmth.

At first it was divine like a summer sunbeam that kissed his skin, as if he was wrapped in the arms of an angel. It reminded him of his mother’s hug before everything went wrong, of his lover’s embrace before he was left all alone with no one by his side. Then the feeling disappeared and realization dawned upon him. There was nothing heavenly about this warmth. The warmth was not a cozy fireplace or a warm sunshine on a holiday’s beach - it was a roaring hellfire that burned away the cold, reigniting the burnt out candle inside him. He did not found it unpleasant.

The sensations in his toes came back, and soon he could wiggle his fingers and move his limbs. Clumsily, he managed to fumble his ways until he could stand up although his legs were wobbling, more so from the sudden fear he felt rather than the cold that surrounded him. He kept his eyes shut, afraid of what he would see if he opened them. Taking a deep breath, he filled his lungs with air which reminded him that he was still alive. He gathered what courage he could find, and opened his eyes.

He was not on the streets anymore. Wherever he was, it was not on Earth.

***

Was this what astronauts saw when they were in space? Actually, now that he looked closer, he did not think so. Those swirling shapes did not look like stars. He was standing, but there was no ground below. Instead, beneath his feet, above his head, and all around him was a blackness that had no end, and in the emptiness were swirling blotches of deep magenta, maroon and blue. They seemed almost like the pictures of nebulae which NASA took, yet something tells him that they were something else entirely, that they this place - wherever he was - was something out of the universe he knew. Perhaps, maybe he was somewhere outside of space and time itself.

His skin prickled, the hairs on his neck shooting up straight. Something was watching him, and it was behind him. He stood still, not daring to even breathe too loudly much less move, but he knew he was just simply delaying the inevitable. Sooner or later he would have to face it. Warily, he turned around.

He gasped. Instinctively, he took a step backwards, and fought hard to ignore the screamings of every fibre of his body that shrieked at him to run away. This thing - the beast - was a creature so hideous, so frightening, so  _ wrong _ , he did not know what to think. It towered over him, much like how a cat was a giant compared to a mouse. Its slitted, blood-red eyes seemed to pierce right through him and stripped him naked and defenseless, making him feel like a vulnerable mosquito with broken wings, ready to be slapped dead. As he gaped at it, he noticed how its physical form kept shifting, as if his mind was trying to find a form that fitted its nature. Perhaps the human mind was not meant to comprehend the nature of an abomination such as this.

As he tore his gaze away from the monstrosity’s eyes, he saw a pair of horns that was simultaneously sharp and curled, and seemed to belong to a ram’s face before the face soon changed into that of a squid-like creature. One moment, the wretched creature was covered with grotesque, dark purple tentacles that writhed every so often. They glistened slightly, even in this dimly lit realm, and appeared to be coated with a thin layer of slime. Another moment, some of the tentacles disappeared only to be replaced with segmented arms with pincer-like claws. Underneath the fur-tentacles, he could see a pair of hooves which soon morphed into spider-legs before becoming a pair of clawed, feline paws.

“I see my appearance distresses you.”

A deep, hoarse voice like desert wind blowing against jagged rocks, resounded in his mind. No sound came out of his mouth, all he managed to do was give a shaky nod. He could feel a cold, mocking chuckle reverberating although he had not physically heard anything, and after the next blink of his eyes, the creature had disappeared. Although he was left staring at the void, he could sense that the heavy, spine-chilling presence was still there in front of him.

“W-What-” he stammered, “what do you want from me?”

The presence seemed to subside, almost as if pausing to consider its words. “In return for assisting you in building what you would consider a successful human life, you will serve me in gathering followers and binding my enemies’ powers.”

He stood there, dumbfounded, unable to process what he had just heard. Had he damned himself to become some demon’s slave? A part of him wanted to recklessly ask what would happen if he would reject the deal, but a shudder he could not suppress warned him otherwise. Running away from this monstrosity was futile; it had pulled him into this eldritch realm, and he was at its mercy to escape out of here.

His mind whirled with the panic and fear, but the tornado swirling in his thoughts stopped to a halt as he realized how he was also being given an opportunity to have the life he once dreamt of. Perhaps - he dared to wish - the deal was not so bad. Yet, a nagging in his mind whispered to him, reminding him of the tragedies that had fallen upon those who made deals with the devil and how they could have been saved from their damned fates by repenting to God.

A dry laughter pierced through the air, sounding like a gunshot among the surrounding silence. “Run then, little boy,” the demon’s cursed voice rang in his mind. “Go to your dear deity, grovel at his feet and beg for his forgiveness. But do consider this before you go: What can your God offer you that I cannot?”

He froze, his breath caught in his throat. He had prayed for years and years and had not seen even a single hint that his so-called God even existed, yet with a single, desperate call to the eldritch beast, he had received more help than any that his deity had ever given him. He’d rather follow the demon who answered instead of a silent God. “I… I accept your deal, but… I don’t know how I’m supposed to do what you want me to do though. I’m just… I’m just a human.”

Suddenly, it was warm. The same warmth he felt when he had called out for the hellish entity that surrounded him. The warmth intensified until this time, it was a roaring inferno, yet the heat - much to his surprise - did not terrify him. He should be running away, running back to his old God begging for forgiveness and redemption, but instead he felt no desire to have a one-sided conversation with that God again.

“A human is all I need.”

***

Many years later, he found himself sitting on a leather armchair in his home, reading the newspaper next to a fireplace. Once he had skimmed over any noteworthy headlines, his eyes instinctively trailed over to the global economy section, taking in the information like some predator surveying its hunting ground.

With his newfound intellect blessed by the demon, it became child’s play to see the strings connecting each event together. He could visualize with ease how pulling a string could change the web’s shape. With his demonic sight that allowed him to see how a butterfly could kickstart a tornado, it did not took long for him to become an affluent.

A maid walked in, her head bent low as she placed his cup of coffee on an oaken table next to him. If someone told him years ago that in the future, he would be rich enough to be able to own a spacious house fitted with maids, he would have thought they were insane. Now, he could go eat in a restaurant without having to constantly order the cheapest dish on the menu, and shop guiltlessly without the thought of rent and loans looming overhead. He was no billionaire, but this lifestyle satisfied him.

Although he was an investor by day, at night, he was a magician. Years ago, the demon directed him to read obscure books, tomes of ancient knowledge. He spent many months studying the theory of magic, understanding how the soul is the source of power for casting spells. He had wondered why the demon had not simply taken his soul after he died, but he soon learnt that souls are most powerful when they are free. A servant, working for it willingly, was what the demon wanted.

His practical training started later. The fiend had asked him, “why do you think demons appear frightening to humans?”

From the research he did, he knew that many spirits were shape shifters. If they wanted desired so, demons could choose to appear like a handsome prince or a gentle grandfather, but they did not.

“It's intentional,” he answered.

He could sense approval emanated from the demon, a feeling which lifted his head, broadened his shoulder.

“Most demons are afraid of mankind, even if that fear is now unwarranted. When witchcraft was at its height, a mere mage could summon up a demon and chain it to some vessel where it would be at the magician’s mercy. A simple human could turn a demon into a slave with nothing but a binding circle, a rock and their magic.”

That was what he became.

He still remembered his first task: capture a rogue imp. In anger and envy, the imp had slandered the demon’s - his patron’s - name, and smeared its reputation in return. As a consequence for besmirching its master, it was to be bounded and punished. He remembered sitting in a ritual chamber, dimly lit by tiny candles. He remembered drawing a binding circle out of salt, but his hands were shaking so badly the circle looked like a jagged oval instead and had to be redone. His patron had reassured him that in the scenario that he lost control over the imp, it would protect him from being harmed in any way.

“Believe in me,” it had said. “Trust that I would not given you this task if I thought you were not ready for it.”

Those words had somewhat steadied his composure, made it so that his breathing was no longer erratic, that his body did not jump at the slightest signs of the plan going haywire. Gingerly, he placed a ruby in the centre of the circle, and began reciting the incantation drilled into his mind. In that moment, his fears dissipated. His words were firm, magically infused with unwavering intent to call forth the disloyal imp. His summons were commands that could not be ignored. The candlelight in the room flickered, casting shadows which were unnaturally large and long, dancing across the cold floor.

It worked.

With his magical senses, he saw a crimson-skinned, gaunt-looking creature materializing in the circle he casted. It snarled at him, with yellow fangs and eyes aflame, but his gaze only hardened as he raised his hands and poured out a heavy wave of energy that crashed onto the imp, pinning it helplessly to the ground. Chains sprouted from the ruby, turning its rabid cries into whimpers as they twined around its body like a metallic boa constrictor. The chains pulled the imp into the ruby, a cage where it remained imprisoned in, powerless, while he broke its will and remade it into a docile servant.

An euphoric rush of energy flowed into him, making his heart race and eyes widen at the powers he now possess. He felt invincible, like a wave of his hands could lay waste to cities. He was its master now. Its powers, and everything that it was, now belonged to him.

***

He gathered demonic lapdogs - some who came to him willingly, others whom were forced to follow him - and soon moved onto enslaving angels who had the audacity to attack his patron. In many ways, angels frightened him more than any creature of hell. An angel who he fought with had appeared as a mass of gargantuan wings wreathed in garish white flames, with rotating eyeballs in their centre. They were always cold, beyond human understanding, solely focused on giving their callous judgement. At least no matter how eldritch the creatures he faced, he could always count on his patron’s promise to protect him against anything he could not handle.

Once, when his arcane chains snapped, unable to hold the strength of a winged warrior, a black bubble surrounded him like a protective cocoon and shielded him from the angel’s blows. He sensed his patron’s presence, a comforting feeling in the back of his mind. Tens of thin, whip-like tentacles erupted from the ground below him and ensnared the angel in their grasps. With their iron grip, the inky limbs bruised the angel, weakening it enough for him to reconjure his chains to subdue the angel once and for all.

He had breathed heavily, his body shaking after the ordeal. His mind and physical form was exhausted, and for a moment he tried to awkwardly crawl away from where his patron was, trying to make himself seem small enough to escape.  _ I’ve screwed up,  _ he panicked thought,  _ the demon’s gonna punish me and I’ll be dead.  _ But his fears were proven wrong. Once it was ensured that he was not hurt too badly, his patron simply remarked that he had to train more.

From then on, he truly became a follower. To serve under a being such as it was no longer something displeasing, something undesired.

“I am powerful,” his patron had told him, “but not as powerful as I can be without followers.”

Using destructive powers siphoned from the enslaved demons and healing abilities stolen from subjugated angels, it was simple to make himself appear like a god’s champion. Just as he now serve his patron, people started flocking to him and following him, believing that he was a favoured soul, chosen by a long forgotten, ancient god that had reawakened from their slumber. It was strange to say the least, going from a homeless man to a moneyed, cult leader in a span of less than a decade. Stranger than that was the realization that he now had a demon-god who forgave whatever mistakes he made and gave him a chance to prove himself worthy of respect.

Some nights he woke up shivering, remembering his time living like a rat on the streets, thrown out by family who had falsely claimed their unconditional love. One mistake - a single moment - had erased a lifetime of familial bond, smashing apart whatever feelings that had glued them together. His god was different. His patron would never hurt him so heartlessly, betrayed him so easily. The demonic and angelic entities he had serving under him would never disobey him either; their loyalties were bounded to him and him alone so it was impossible for any rebellion to occur.

In that regard, his life had greatly improved. What he had never expected in life though, was to meet her.

It was on his walk home, after a professional gathering, a strenuous meetup between many business owners and investors. The meeting was exhausting, and it drained him to spend time strutting among the pompous millionaires, unable to do anything but follow the pretentious social rules that vexed him. He was taking a shortcut through the park, it was autumn with the sun slowly sinking, and that was when he saw her. He was stopped, awestruck in his tracks. Her hair was the color of a bonfire, and the world around her seemed to be aflame. Vermilion leaves carpeted the soil, and she was otherworldly as she walked barefooted, underneath the naked trees. If it wasn’t for the fact that he loathed angels, he would have thought she was one.

She noticed him staring, and explained how she loved exercising at this time of the day. She was poised, and drew him into her conversations without awkwardness or pause, talking with him about nature and how in this urban city nobody ever touched the earth below their feet. He had laughed at hippies who spoke about reconnecting with the natural world, dismissed their words as dreamy and idiotic, and yet somehow, her words enthralled him. Her energy was vivifying, a refreshing change from the people he normally met in his economical world. 

They exchanged numbers, and went on to eat lunches and dinners together. She was very much an artist, her creative mind something he could never hope to obtain. Every time they planned to have a conventional date at the cinema, they would somehow end up staring at a surrealistic painting in a bizarre art exhibition or listening to outlandish poetry on a cafe’s poetry night. She reminded him of a sylph he once saw flying about: a free spirit of the air, a summer’s breeze that refused to be caged, untamable soul that followed her heart without deliberation. However, unlike the wind, she was not something coming and going; she had never let go of the ties she made with anyone she cared about.

A stranger looking at them would not have expected them to be a couple. In every sense of the word, she was an artist. She made her livings through painting commissions of art and occasionally doing some freelance writing. Even he was surprised by the intensity of the whirlwind of feelings she inspired in him.

One night at her house, she had shown him a box filled with photographs of family, friends, and past lovers. Some of the photos were physically worn by time, held together by strips of sellotape, while others were stained yellow with age. These were pictures of people who had meant the world to her, who had spent a considerable portion of their lives with her, who for some reason had now moved away. But she still held onto them, still tries her best to keep in touch, maybe seeing them once in a blue moon. She never gave up on anyone, whether it was her unfaltering faith in people or her unyielding belief in God. The deity she was brought up to worship was still the deity she worshipped today, with not a question wondered about existence or morality.

She had shown him her past and heart, stripped bare, clear like glass, scars and all. He had almost want to spill out his hatred of the heavens to her, along with all the anguish he suffered. Yet, every time he almost slipped out about his demonic patron, his throat seemed to snapped shut. How could someone so endearing, so  _ pure  _ accept a person like him? It was the very same thought that made him come to the conclusion of his unworthiness. If he would have to hide such an important part of his life away from her, then he did not deserve to hold the hand she held out to him.

Yet one day, stuck in a taxi together in the downtown traffic, she proposed to him. Seeing her hopeful eyes and the meager but heartfelt ring presented to him, he could not refuse. He said yes.

It had felt wrong to say yes without coming clean to her, so he told her everything. Like he had expected, she was shocked at the news that he served a demon, but he was even more shocked when she pulled him into a kiss and melted their lips into one. In his stunned state, he barely comprehended her words when she told him that for all that mattered, he could worship a rock and she’d still love him so long as he hurt no one.

Not long later, they wed.

***

“She is the enemy.”

He shook his head, eyes wide in disbelief. His patron stared down at him, its hellfire gaze surprisingly cold. His wife followed a religion she was raised up to believe in, a path in which she worshipped a deity who had supposedly opposed his patron by assisting the angels that sought to bring justice to the demon. 

“By supporting the enemy, she is our enemy,” a growl stained the demon’s voice. He had heard it many times before but not once was it directed at him. “Either change her - make her mine - or leave her be.”

If there was someone who was incessantly steadfast, it was his wife. She loved him and would never hurt him, and at the same time, she was woman equally loyal to her deity just as he was to his own. Once she pledged her faith to anyone or anything, her devotion would never waver - this was what made him gave her his heart. To force her to change that fundamental part of her - forcing her to betray a god she vowed to follow - was akin to changing her very nature. If he were to use persuasion magic or mind-affecting spells to corrupt her beliefs, he might as well turn her into his thrall.

“I won’t do it.”

Although his voice was initially firm, his facade of confidence soon shattered. After years of working with his patron, he had almost forgotten that demons were traditionally said to be evil, and terrifying.

The hairs on his arms raised tall, and he noticed himself shivering despite how the room seemed to have became stiflingly hot. A heavy, dreadful miasma surrounded him, and slowly, it suffocated him, making it much harder to breathe as his breath was increasingly becoming shallower. For the first time in a long while, he wanted to run away from this demon whom he had vowed to serve.

The sheer anger radiating off his patron was terrifying.

“Please,” he squeaked out, raising his arms up in a feeble attempt to shield against any attack. “Trust me please, that she won’t hurt you. She’ll never hurt us!”

The silence that dragged on for what felt like eternity made him want to hide, in anxiety and fear of what may come. All he did was stood there, shaking,

“You dare disobey me.”

It wasn’t a question. He wanted to utter out something to defend himself, to justify his actions, but there was no way to deny his actions. It was an irrefutable fact that he had talked back, and refused to follow a direct order. 

“If you insist, so be it.”

The demon’s words were polite enough, yet it oozed of scorn, a feeling of contempt bubbling and boiling, ready to explode at any moment. He swallowed, and closed his eyes, bracing himself for whatever punishment he was going to be subjected to.

Nothing came. Like a fading dream, the demon’s presence dissipated from the room.

***

For the next few weeks, everything seemed normal;  he worked as an investor by day, and attended to instructing his cultish followers at night. Life appeared standard, except for the uncharacteristically cool reception he received from the demon. Whenever he called for it the demon would come and show itself for its followers to see, yet the conversations it had with him were noticeably clipped, its voice raucous, lacking any trace of previous warmth.

On a Thursday night before he went to sleep, his wife explained that she tomorrow night she would arrive home considerably late.

“I have go to the party celebrating the opening of my friend’s art gallery,” she said. “It’s gonna take a while, but I’ll be back before you know it, love.”

On the Friday night, he went to bed, exhausted by the weary week. The next Saturday morning, she still did not came home.

He frowned. Had she gotten herself overly drunk and had to stayed over at her friend’s place until the hangover passed? He picked up his phone and dialed her number, but there was no answer. Telling himself that he was overreacting, he simply left her a text asking her to call back when she was free.

Reassuring himself that he was worrying over nothing, he went about his day. Passing the calendar on the way out of his room, he remembered that their anniversary was coming up quite soon and that he still had not thought about finding any gifts. A panic brewed up inside him at the realization, but it was quickly smothered away when he remembered how she had gawked at a statue they once saw on sale. It was a sculpted figure of two lovers, featured in a pose reminiscent of a Renaissance painting he could not pronounce the name.

“It would look divine in our garden, don’t you think?” she had asked, her eyes glowing. However, after glancing at the price tag, the shine in her eyes turned dark.

He remembered vaguely where the shop was so he drove around town to find it. The price was hefty, but anything for the woman who brought into his life something he did not realize he was missing. A plan was made with the seller to deliver the statue at the dawn break of their anniversary date.

Before driving home, he treated his growling stomach lunch at a high-end restaurant, and after tasting how palatable the food was, made reservations for a future dinner for two. When he had arrived home and pulled out his phone to check for any unchecked texts, unread mails or unanswered phone calls, it became known to him that his phone had died hours ago.

Clumsily, he searched through his surprisingly messy drawer for the charger and charged the phone’s batteries.

The screen flared up: he had four missed calls.

The numbers were unfamiliar, but someone calling so many times consecutively must have had something vital to say to him. He phoned back.

The music that played while he waited was so dull and lifeless, it made him so bored the wait seemed longer than it actually was. Finally, a voice answered. A young, female voice whose bell-like tone reminded him of his wife.

She asked him if he was the husband of his wife. He said yes.

“Did something happen?”

There was a pause, and a lump grew heavy in his throat, like a bone lodged between his vocal chords.

“I am terribly sorry, sir. We tried to contact you hours ago-”

“Just tell me what happened!”

He had snapped. His voice breaking with the dread, cracking under the heaviness that weighed down upon it.

“There was a car accident on Friday night, your wife was injured and lost a large volume of blood,” the voice through the phone seemed miles away. His head felt light, and the room was freezing. It was so cold, the last time he felt this cold was years back then, a lifetime ago when he was a rat on the streets, when the bitter winter was turning him into a corpse.

“We tried our best to save her, but she arrived too late and by then it was impossible.”

The girl spoke some more. Her words were dust in his ears - all words, except for the one phrase that echoed again and again like a perpetual chant.

“Your wife had passed away.”

He hurled the phone across the floor and staggered back against the wall. Shivering violently, he wrapped his arms around himself, pulling himself into a trembling hug. By the time he realized it, he found himself curled up like a hedgehog on the floor, leaning against the wall. The room was frigid. She was gone.

***

Lying down like this with her eyes closed, she could have been asleep if not for the fact that the chest did not gently rose and fell like it should have did, and that the soft snore he had grew so used to was missing.

“Yes, that is her.”

Once the identification was completed, the doctor nodded and moved away, leaving him some privacy to mourn. He felt alone in the morgue, cold in the hospital’s sub-basement. He could not say anything but stare at her, his fists shaking. She was truly ravishing, even in death, truly like a sylph.

She could have been one, except sylphs did not reek of fiendish magic.

***

“Explain to me,” he shouted, with a newfound, reckless courage. “Why the fuck is your scent all over her corpse?”

The demon growled, its fangs glinting with an unspoken threat.

“She sided with the enemy and you stood by her,” it said in a cool, dismissive voice, as if making a remark about the weather, waving away whatever grief he felt. “She distracted you from your true purpose. She had to be eliminated.”

“She was my wife!”

“You are my servant,” the demon snarled back. “If not for your usefulness, I would have killed you too for behaving with such insolence towards your god.”

He staggered back, as if someone had stabbed him. The demon did nothing, nothing except crushed him with words that hurt him more than anything it could have done to his body. For a long while, he just stood there, staring at an empty space with glassy eyes and shaking limbs. He did not notice the demonic presence leaving him, tired of dealing with an insect throwing a temper tantrum. By the time the shock loosened its grip on him, he was all alone in the ritual chamber.

By the time he realized the true weight of making a deal with a demon, it was too late. His wife was dead; the only person who he actually loved was murdered. All he actually gained from this cursed deal was cold, worthless money, and a cult made up of gullible idiots.

The worse part was that he had it coming.

The demon had been initially  _ nice _ . It was someone he could rely on to protect him, to ensure that he was alive and well. He had believed the beast he called his patron had cared about him as a person, but it was undeniably obvious now that it was wishful thinking. How nice did he expected a demon who enslaved angels to be?

He stood up. His legs ever so slowly ceased to quiver. With a hardness in his eyes that he had not possessed in decades, he climbed the stairs out of the ritual chamber, marching straight towards his library.

In the corner of the room was a shelf, warded so that it would go unnoticed by anyone else except for him, slipped under their gaze as their mind became occupied with other distracting thoughts. He was anything but distracted. His eyes immediately fell upon a leather tome, its skin flaking and losing its colour with age. This was his grimoire, book where he kept notes of all the important magical knowledge that he had gathered throughout the years. He picked it up, and flicked open to a page where he remembered jotting down one of the first magical theories he had learnt.

“Of course,” he murmured to himself as he skimmed through the writings explaining the human soul. 

_ The soul is the source of power for casting spells. _

That much he knew, but just how powerful could a human soul be? He placed the grimoire back where it belonged on the shelf, and searched with predatory eyes for another book he knew he had somewhere, a long forgotten tome that he had initially dismissed, a piece of text written about soul magic. His eyes flickered about, sweeping hungrily across the shelf until, finally -

There it was.

Snatching the text from its resting place, he swiftly opened it. Not caring about anything else, he sat down and scrupulously read through every page, ravenously devouring every word like a man dying from drought who had just discovered water. Time flew by; dawn became dusk which melted to night. As stars glimmered in the sky, he continued to read until every word burned into his mind, ignoring the strains weighing on his eyes and the grumbling of his stomach. His mind spun, and pieces of a plan soon formed. By the time the next dawn came, the plan was concrete.

By the time his next mission came, he was ready.

The demon had given him an order to subjugate an angelic general whom it had fought with and weakened. He nodded, indicating his understanding of the task and gathered the necessary ingredients to cast the binding circle. He started chanting, the first few verses same as always, as the demon watched him, a sadistic glee gleaming in its eyes. It could feel the power building up in the air; the air in the ritual chamber was crackling, electrified with ancient magic. He felt like a man standing on top of a stone tower, a storm brewing around him. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, reverberating in the distance, coming closer and closer with every second.

Lightning struck, delivering his vengeance.

The demon screamed. Whatever glee shone in its eyes disappeared and was replaced with an unexpected abject terror, an emotion it never thought it would ever feel. It had believed the mage was raising energy for a curse that would rain hell upon the enemy angel, showing the angel who was its master. Yet, it screamed in anguish and pain it had never experienced, realizing that it was the curse’s intended target. It screamed, realizing it was betrayed. Raising its claw, it ignited a ball of hellfire and threw it in rage at the treacherous human, only to find that the fire flickered like a blown candle into smoky wisps.

Chains of barbed wires bursted from the circle and strangled the demon, locking its limbs in place, forming a noose around its neck. The spikes raked across its skin, tearing them open like knives shredding paper. The demon's wailings only added to fuel to his anger - this was the least it deserved.

He continued to speak the incantations, infusing every words with the rage, the grief, the shame, the loathing he felt towards both himself and the demon. Cursing his fate and the demon responsible for it, he poured every emotion he suffered into the magic.

The demon howled, gasping at the agony inflicted. Venoms dripped from the barbs, burning its skin like acid eating through metal, melting its muscles into pitiful mush. Its eyes widen, disbelieving. How could a mere human-

“You know well why you’d rather have me serve you willingly instead of just taking my soul,” the mage answered the unspoken question. “Human souls are most powerful when they are free. If you simply mind-controlled me or force me to hand my power over to you unwillingly, the power you’d gain would be less than what I could produce of my own free will.”

He could almost see the cogs winding in the demon’s mind, the light of understanding shining in its eyes as it now realized what he planned to do. The strongest spells were casted by utilizing all of the soul’s energy, and the only way to fully extract such a power is by willingly breaking the soul. Like an atomic nuclei splitting apart, he broke.

He shattered his soul, smashing it into intangible shards which boiled, disintegrating into smoke. Underneath the tidal wave of pure energy, of unadulterated power, he did not felt any pain. He could not feel anything actually, except for the wrath and abhorrence rushing through him, drowning the demon who was helpless on the floor, unable to escape.

With no soul, he would never glimpse heaven, hell, earth or any other realm ever again. With his final, dying breath, he cursed.

“I damn you, demon with delusions of godhood. I curse you, so that all your followers stab you with a poisoned knife like I did. May no soul ever trust you, may you find no one who would listen and believe your words. May you suffer for all your eternal life, and remember how I cursed you."

He smiled, as his body flared and faded from existence, the last sounds in his ears being the demon’s screams.


End file.
